Overdrive Radio

The need for greater parking capacity, well-managed, throughout the nation is no secret. The need along Texas lanes was the subject of the lively discussion Overdrive held at the Great American Trucking Show last month, devoted to parking. In today’s podcast, you’ll get a full window into that discussion, aimed at engaging with Texas DOT freight planning branch manager Sherry Pifer and others from the agency as they re-evaluate their own approach to marshalling public resources and create partnership with private companies toward parking improvement. The discussion could well provide a model toward engaging with other states, too.

Along the way you’ll hear from a multitude of owner-operators, drivers and other drivers in attendance, as well as owner-operator Ingrid Brown, Clark Freight Lines driver Jack Smith and former owner-op Scott Grenerth, who moderated the discussion. Grenerth, as regular listerners will know, is part of the Truck Specialized Parking Service company.

Overdrive Radio's rebroadcast of the Trucking Solutions Group's "accident-awareness" conference call, with interviews about the impetus for the event with owner-ops Vince Crisanti and Shane Rizzuto. Both operators were motivated in part by personal experience with crashes on the roadways, and hopeful that "anyone who touches a seatbelt" could benefit from the input of firefighter, police and water rescue first-responders who presented. Also: Resources for dealing with the personal aftermath of any major accident, with some first-person stories of coping from more than one trucker and family member. One comes from Monica Stevens, widow of Harry Pierce, pictured with his ridealong dog, Blue, who survived Pierce's tragic crash.

Overdrive Radio's rebroadcast of the Trucking Solutions Group's "accident-awareness" conference call, with interviews about the impetus for the event with owner-ops Vince Crisanti and Shane Rizzuto. Both operators were motivated in part by personal experience with crashes on the roadways, and hopeful that "anyone who touches a seatbelt" could benefit from the input of firefighter, police and water rescue first-responders who presented. Also: Resources for dealing with the personal aftermath of any major accident, with some first-person stories of coping from more than one trucker and family member. One comes from Monica Stevens, widow of Harry Pierce, pictured with his ridealong dog, Blue, who survived Pierce's tragic crash.

Something a little different on Overdrive Radio today – the podcast will transport you like so many futuristic teleporting time machines to a Thursday, Aug. 22, panel at the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. That panel was all about the notion of a “driverless” truck and where drivers really fit in as such a thing gets closer to real. Find a brief contemporaneous report from the panel, a discussion with Starsky Robotics' Paul Schlegel and Pronto's Ognen Stojanovski, via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/drivers-role-in-driverless-trucks-explored-in-gats-panel/

Something a little different on Overdrive Radio today – the podcast will transport you like so many futuristic teleporting time machines to a Thursday, Aug. 22, panel at the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. That panel was all about the notion of a “driverless” truck and where drivers really fit in as such a thing gets closer to real. Find a brief contemporaneous report from the panel, a discussion with Starsky Robotics' Paul Schlegel and Pronto's Ognen Stojanovski, via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/drivers-role-in-driverless-trucks-explored-in-gats-panel/

In this Overdrive Radio podcast edition, run through the performances by competing truckers Jason Henley, "Mississippi Ken" Freeman and the ultimate talent search winner, Taylor Barker, live from the Great American Trucking Show a week ago. Also: A warm-up three-song act by Paul Marhoefer and Tony Justice's homespun emcee-ing of the event, an ongoing anchor among the community of musicians who also happened to haul freight on the open road, or vice versa, as it were. Thirdly: Near the top, a brief talk with Pennsylvania-based owner-operator Mike Landis, also of the United States Transportation Alliance, about his view of the FMCSA's hours of service proposal, including a bit of clarification of how the rule views computation of the split-sleeper options it's proposing.

In this Overdrive Radio podcast edition, run through the performances by competing truckers Jason Henley, "Mississippi Ken" Freeman and the ultimate talent search winner, Taylor Barker, live from the Great American Trucking Show a week ago. Also: A warm-up three-song act by Paul Marhoefer and Tony Justice's homespun emcee-ing of the event, an ongoing anchor among the community of musicians who also happened to haul freight on the open road, or vice versa, as it were. Thirdly: Near the top, a brief talk with Pennsylvania-based owner-operator Mike Landis, also of the United States Transportation Alliance, about his view of the FMCSA's hours of service proposal, including a bit of clarification of how the rule views computation of the split-sleeper options it's proposing.

If you missed the Great American Trucking Show or the FMCSA's webcast last week, you can sit in on the first hour and more of the hours of service listening session held at GATS in Dallas Aug. 23, 2019, via this special presentation of Overdrive Radio. This was the first listening session held by the FMCSA following its introduction of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that offered some changes to truckers aimed at increasing both safety and some measure of flexibility for drivers.

Two significant elements of that were revisions to split-sleeper-berth regs as well as the proposal to allow up to a three-hour pause to the 14-hour duty clock daily with an off-duty mid-period break. Read more about the proposed changes via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/stop-the-clock-proposed-hours-of-service-overhaul-would-allow-drivers-to-pause-14-hour-clock/

If you missed the Great American Trucking Show or the FMCSA's webcast last week, you can sit in on the first hour and more of the hours of service listening session held at GATS in Dallas Aug. 23, 2019, via this special presentation of Overdrive Radio. This was the first listening session held by the FMCSA following its introduction of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that offered some changes to truckers aimed at increasing both safety and some measure of flexibility for drivers.

Two significant elements of that were revisions to split-sleeper-berth regs as well as the proposal to allow up to a three-hour pause to the 14-hour duty clock daily with an off-duty mid-period break. Read more about the proposed changes via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/stop-the-clock-proposed-hours-of-service-overhaul-would-allow-drivers-to-pause-14-hour-clock/

Wednesday night in Dallas, classic country star and gospel singer Leon Everette, with trucker-songwriter Bill Weaver, started us up with a sound-check of sorts that turned into an impromptu extended jam -- you'll hear some of that and more in this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast. (Paul Marhoefer, too.) And though the news has been dominated this week and the previous one by the hours of service, we sit down at GATS for a chat about history, training and more with Jay Thompson of Transportation Business Associates. He grew up in rural Indiana and starting his working career driving big trucks, a route taken by the generations of men in his family as well, all the way back to his grandfather, Walter Thompson. Walter had a chauffer’s license at age 18, in 1917, and given we’re talking today as an industry about the potential for a pilot program for under-21 CDL drivers, we sat down to ferret out a little bit of the history there. As Thompson says, history often repeats itself in various ways …